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Lessons from China's Cultural Revolution January 21, 2026
Just as nobody foresaw the Cultural Revolution, few if any foresee the emergence of the American equivalent.
China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) is interesting on multiple levels. The conventional narrative holds that it was the result of a power struggle between Mao and competing elements in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as Mao launched a chaotic cleansing of the Party's leadership that soon devolved into widespread disorder that consumed much and yielded little of lasting value. My understanding of the Cultural Revolution comes not just from academic studies but from first-hand accounts from friends who lived through it. There are two stipulations in this account: 1. The Cultural Revolution remains politically sensitive, as it was clearly a catastrophe for China that reflects poorly on various sacrosanct figures and institutions. Discussions of what happened are not welcomed, and so even when those who lived through it are in the safety of their own home in the US, they tend to speak in hushed tones, for the topic is verboten. 2. As a general rule, Asian cultures do not relish badmouthing their nation or culture. Westerners will not be offered honest accounts unless they are longtime friends who have demonstrated their trustworthiness over many years. So "friends" who are actually only acquaintances are not going to speak openly. The travails of senior officials are well-known. A recent book documents the experiences of Xi Jinping's father, a high-ranking CCP official who--along with his son--suffered greatly in the Cultural revolution: The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping details the difficulties faced by loyalists in surviving Mao's mercurial purges and precipitous humiliations of senior officials. It doesn't take much armchair psychoanalyzing to discern the enormous impact the Cultural Revolution had on Xi Jinping's worldview, mindset, goals and priorities. Equally obvious is how events quickly spiraled out of control, reaching extremes far beyond what was initially anticipated. The public's passive compliance to authority and narrative control was taken to be permanent. Passive compliance appears permanent but it is always contingent. Firsthand accounts of regular people have typically received a lower profile. One friend's father was an officer in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) which we might have presumed was immune to the chaos. But PLA officers were demoted, put under house arrest and humiliated, while many of those associated with someone deemed an enemy of the people were sent down to the countryside even if they were innocent of wrongdoing. Another friend's father was put under house arrest for years for the "crime" of having traveled to Soviet Bloc countries as an acrobat in a performing troupe. In other words, the Cultural Revolution opened the door to denouncing, humiliating, torturing and even killing not actual "class enemies," but loyal Party members who were "guilty" of nothing more than performing their assigned duties. The Cultural Revolution gave permission to pursue personal vendettas and exact retribution on an unimaginably vast scale. A friend born in 1967 at the height of the initial tumult was named "Love Mao" as a means of fitting in and inoculating the family from the sort of baseless denunciations that were not just permitted but encouraged as "revolutionary activity." What few if any commentators mention is the unrecognized pent-up frustrations with a system that was launched with such promise and delivered less than what was promised. "Let a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools of thought contend" turned into The Great Leap Forward, a disastrous policy that led to famine. The unstated context of the Cultural Revolution was poverty. Another friend described how scarce and precious eggs were: her parents carefully divided the occasional egg into four pieces, one for each family member. People did not have to be coerced to join the Red Guard's rampages; they relished the opportunity to be free of any cultural or political constraints. It's tempting to dismiss this as just another example of the madness of crowds, but this ignores the underlying dynamic of expectations not being met and the consequences of repression and never-ending power struggles and purges. The first lesson of the Cultural Revolution is that if redress is unavailable, then retribution will become the default pathway. I discuss these dynamics in my new book Investing In Revolution in the context of their inevitability in the current era. The second lesson of the Cultural Revolution is that allowing--much less encouraging--the unleashing of frustrations with the system on ill-defined "enemies of the people" who are innocent quickly spirals out of control. In the Cultural Revolution, the targets quickly expanded from those in authority positions in the Party to anyone deemed suspicious for any number of reasons: being educated, having traveled to other countries, being the offspring of the landlord class, being the offspring of a purged official (like Xi Jinping being abused because his father had fallen from grace), or simply being an object of envy. This expanding circle soon included cultural relics of the past, and so irreplaceable Buddhist temples and other priceless artifacts were destroyed out of "revolutionary fervor." The third lesson of the Cultural Revolution is that once these forces are released, it is impossible to put them back in the bottle. Those in power reckon that unleashing a flood tide of resentments and frustrations with the system on a selected group of scapegoats relieves the potential risk of the public revolting against the regime. But this ignores the potential for the injustice and chaos to destabilize the regime, for the injustice and destruction don't just affect the scapegoats; they undermine the social, economic and political orders, too. 
Just as nobody foresaw the Cultural Revolution, few if any foresee the emergence of the American equivalent. The consequences of expectations not being met build up despite repression and narrative control, and when the containment finally bursts, the dynamics are nonlinear--chaotic, unpredictable, uncontrollable. Everything is forever until something unexpected breaks. My new book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free) Check out my updated Books and Films. Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com Subscribe to my Substack for free My recent books: Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site. THE REVOLUTION TRILOGY: Investing In Revolution Ultra-Processed Life The Mythology of Progress Systemic Problems/Solutions Investing In Revolution (2025) Introduction (free) The Mythology of Progress (2024) Introduction (free) Global Crisis, National Renewal (2021) Introduction (free) Money and Work Unchained (2017) Introduction (free) A Radically Beneficial World (2015) Introduction (free) What You Can Do Yourself Ultra-Processed Life (2025) Introduction (free) Self-Reliance in the 21st Century (2022) Introduction (free) When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal (2022) Introduction (free) Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy (2014) Intro (free) Novels The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher Intro (free) The Secret Life of an Asian Heroine First chapters (free) Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free Investing In Revolution print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (145 pages, 2025) 
Only now do we see that we've been investing in revolution for decades--not the revolutions we thought we were investing in, revolutions in technology and finance, but in the social revolution made inevitable by the extremes that we've reached in our single-minded pursuit of private gains.
The pendulum that we've pushed to an extreme will swing to the opposite extreme, and the artifices that have propped up a facade a stability for decades will accelerate the disorder rather than reverse it. We now stand at the point of decision, and this book offers a path to a reformation and renewal that serves the shared interests of us all, not just the few. Introduction (free) Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, audiobook, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) 
Ultra-Processed Life: the substitution of a synthetic, commoditized, very profitable facsimile for what was once authentic.
Ultra-Processed Life is my term for everything that is analogous to ultra-processed snacks: attractively marketed, instantly alluring, easy to consume, addictive by design, tasty in the moment but harmful over time, its origins a black box of unknown processes, the brightly colored product bearing no resemblance to the real-world ingredients, an idealized form of what is inherently imperfect, untethered from the natural world. As with many others, the catalyst for my exploration was a life-threatening medical crisis that did not have a specific cause. This led me to wonder if our entire way of life is like an ultra-processed snack: tasty but not healthy, edible but stripped of the nutrients we need to be healthy, addictive by design. Introduction (free) The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $20, (Kindle $9.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) audiobook, Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF) 
What if the policies to accelerate growth are no longer working because our fix for every problem--growth at any cost--is failing? We're told Progress is inevitable as a result of technology, but everyday life is getting harder, not easier--the opposite of Progress, what I call Anti-Progress.
What if the real source of the unraveling is far deeper than economics or politics? What if the problem is what we see as the inevitable destiny of humanity--Progress--is actually a modern mythology, disconnected from the real-world consequences of growth for growth's sake? We indignantly reject that Progress is a mythology, but our need for mythology hasn't gone away because we've mastered technology; we've created a modern mythology of technology that is heedless of its own consequences. To truly progress, we need a new mythology aligned to 21st century realities. Read the Introduction and first chapter for free
Recent entries: Lessons from China's Cultural Revolution January 21, 2026 Narrative Control Made Easy: Us versus Them January 19, 2026 Why Is Everything Such a Hot Mess? January 12, 2026 The Perverse Incentives Dominating Our Lives January 8, 2026 We Can Discern Cycles and Waves, But Not the Outcomes January 6, 2026 Channeling Napoleon and Chou En-Lai January 5, 2026 Pretense, Staging, Expediency: the "Solutions" That Implode the Whole Shebang January 1, 2026 Everyone's a Lender Now: Shadow Banking USA December 29, 2025 The Good News Is People Are Realizing We're On Our Own December 26, 2025 My Christmas Letter December 23, 2025
Insane Financial Imbalances and Social Revolution
December 19, 2025
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"There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity." (Douglas MacArthur) "We are what we repeatedly do." (Aristotle) "Do the thing and you shall have the power." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." (E.F. Schumacher, via Tom R.) "He who will not risk cannot win." (John Paul Jones) "When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army." (Honore de Balzac) "Progress is not possible without deviation." (Frank Zappa, via Richard Metzger) "Victory favors those who take pains." (amat victoria curam) "The man who has a garden and a library has everything." (Cicero, via Lee Bentley) "A healthy homecooked family meal and a home garden are revolutionary acts." (CHS) "Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything." (Napoleon Bonaparte) "The way of the Tao is reversal" Or "Reversal is the movement of Tao." (Lao Tzu) "Chance favours the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur) "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." (Winston Churchill) "Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasures." (Rumi) "The realm of gratitude is boundless." (CHS, 11/25/15) "History doesn't have a reverse gear." (CHS, 12/22/15) Smith's Law of Conservation of Risk: Every sustained action has more than one consequence. Some consequences will appear positive for a time before revealing their destructive nature. Some consequences will be intended, some will not. Some will be foreseeable, some will not. Some will be controllable, some will not. Those that are unforeseen and uncontrollable will trigger waves of other unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences. (July 8, 2014)(thanks to Lew G. for retitling the idea.) Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only. The Smith Corollary to Metcalfe's Law (The Network Effect): the value of the network is created not just by the number of connected devices/users but by the value of the information and knowledge shared by users in sub-networks and in the entire network. (CHS, 4/6/16) My Credo of Liberation: I no longer care if the power centers of our society--the distant, fortified castles of our financial feudal system--are changed by my actions, for I am liberated by the act of resistance. I am no longer complicit in perpetuating fraudulent feudalism and the pathology of concentrated power. I no longer covet signifiers of membership in the Upper Caste that serves the plutocracy. I am liberated from self-destructive consumerist-State financialization and the delusion that debt servitude and obedience to sociopathological Elites serve my self-interests. (Thank you, Klaus-Peter L., for reminding me) "We've become a culture of excuses rather than solutions: solutions always require sustained effort and discipline." (CHS 4/9/16) "Fraud as a way of life caters an extravagant banquet of consequences." (CHS 4/14/16) "Creativity = problem solving = value creation." (CHS 6/4/16) "Truth is powerful because it is the core dynamic of solving problems." (CHS 7/21/17) "We live in a system of human emotions that masquerades as a science (economics)." (CHS 1/1/18) "Always remember, your focus determines your reality." (George Lucas) "Diversity is for poor people. Sameness is for the successful." (GFB) "When power dissipates suddenly, it dissipates completely." (CHS 7/14/19) "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." (Henry David Thoreau) "Markets cannot price in the value of non-monetized natural assets such as diverse ecosystems." (CHS 7/14/19) "Magical thinking isn't optimism, it is folly." CHS 1/3/22) "Tune in (to self-reliance), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to relocalizing capital and agency)." (CHS 1/5/22) "The path to everything you desire starts here: like yourself as you are right now." (CHS 11/20/22) "There are only two signals: how many essentials you produce and share and if you're consuming less with better results. Everything else is noise." (CHS 12/17/22) "Liberation is no longer needing any confirmation or feedback from others or the world for one's sense of self. Wealth, fame, recognition, admiration, praise, prestige, approval, sainthood, martyrdom, success: none are needed, none are desired." (CHS 12/26/22) "When fame, wealth, prestige, status and glory are out of reach, you're free to pursue other more valuable things." (CHS 2/6/22) "It is the sacred duty of every activist who seeks to better their community to grow and share as much life-giving food as is humanly possible." (CHS 6/15/23) "Being anonymous, gray and unknown is the ideal state of freedom." (CHS 3/15/24) "We seem to have entered a world of anti-leisure and anti-productivity in which the unpaid shadow work demanded to keep all the complicated digital bits in motion obliterate our leisure and productivity." CHS (5/22/24) "It is axiomatic that failing systems work the best just before they fail catastrophically." Ray W. "Looking younger is mere technique; thinking younger demands creativity." CHS (10/16/24) "Tell me what's taboo and I'll tell you the truths that threaten the status quo." CHS (12/15/24) "This is the core of the Attention Economy: the ultimate addiction is the addiction to ourselves." CHS (1/28/25) "If You Seek the Truth, Look for What's Taboo." CHS (7/18/25) "My definition of self-reliance: the less you need, the easier it is to get what you need." CHS (7/26/25) "Mastery requires reading and doing." CHS (7/28/25) "The replacement of authentic value, quality, agency, choice, trust, legitimacy and experience with self-serving facsimiles is the key dynamic of Ultra-Processed Life, my term for the present-day human condition." CHS (8/12/25) "Ultra-Processed Life replaces an authentic experience with a synthetic, simulated, commoditized, highly profitable version that's superficially attractive but destructive over the long term." CHS (8/12/25) "What we see everywhere is the replacement of authentic things--including democracy--with synthetic facsimiles designed to maintain the illusion of choice and value." CHS (8/12/25) "Sometimes certainty is the enemy we don't even see and uncertainty is our most faithful ally." CHS (9/20/25) |
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